


Chaos, Correlation, Creativity

by Eternal_Love_Song



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Character Study, Developing Friendships, Domestic Avengers, Friendship, Gen, Inspiration, Loki Does What He Wants, Muses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-27 14:18:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7621693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eternal_Love_Song/pseuds/Eternal_Love_Song
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki is the thread. He weaves himself through the lives of mortals in the hopes of creating something beautiful.</p><p>A story of muses and creativity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chaos, Correlation, Creativity

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really know what to say about this or how to describe. I had an idea and I wrote it and I think it's pretty interesting.
> 
> So enjoy~

Steve was a child when he first saw it. Settled in the middle of a pile of crayons and a storm of paper, he was determined to make something pretty and good for his mother. He was at the age where he didn't always make words when talking. Sometimes it was just sounds and sometimes it was words that were too mispronounced to be understood.

He was happily babbling as he determinedly attempted choosing the best color for his pretty. It was a mix of words and pretend words, but his friend was nodding along and making sounds in return and he _felt_ understood.

 _This color?_ His friend suggested. It wasn't a suggestion made with words. His friend changed the color of his skin and eyes to green, indicating that color. 

Steve picked up two different green crayons, staring at them intently to figure out which one was the better one. He pushed the loser of this examination away and began to color on the nearest paper. This was going to be the best thing they ever made together!

* * *

 The first time Natasha saw it, it was not a friend, nor was it an enemy. It was a bird.

She was small. Too small to protect herself from the things that wanted to hurt her,  but not too small to kill them first. Never too small to kill. That's what they taught her here. 

But because she was too small to fight effectively, she had to do something else. She had to look pretty, innocent, approachable, but she must still be useful. That was why they stood her before a mirror and expected her to learn ballet. They had showed her the motions they wanted her to practice and she was equally resentful and intrigued.

"Lift your leg higher." The admonishment came from the magpie in the mirror. It almost broke her concentration, but they were still watching her from across the room and they would punish her for failing, thus she managed to keep herself in position just barely. She glared at the thing, which did not react to her at all. "Higher," It repeated.

She refused to think that she was crazy, if for no other reason than she did not _want_ to be crazy. She wasn't certain if they could see it, but they didn't act like it. All the same, she lifted her leg just a little bit higher.

"Better," It told her. "Now extend your arm and hold for thirty seconds."

Natasha stretched out as far as she could.

"Be straighter." She tried. "Lift your head." She looked up. "Beautiful."

Natasha resisted the urge to smile, but inside she preened. There was a part of her that loved this and wanted to be good at it, that wanted to have a skill that wasn't murder or deception.

"Rest your limbs," It told her. "Then try again."

* * *

By the time Jan was a teenager, she had seen it multiple times over the years. From the first time she picked up a sowing needle, to the fashion shows she created for her dolls, it had been one of her best friends. It had been a girl when it first appeared, someone she wanted to dress up even before she knew how to make things to dress it up in, but now when she saw it, it was as a guy. A really attractive guy that she wanted to show off for, but was still not afraid to get advice from.

"White or black?" Jan questioned, holding up two different fabric swatches. Her room was a mess of fabric and clothing and her bed was covered in papers and sketch pads that displayed different designs.

"Black," It told her. It was studying her dresser rather than looking at her, making Jan pout and puff out her cheeks. 

"You aren't even looking!"

"You said the colors out loud," It replied. It was looking at her make up now, but not touching it. She wasn't certain if it was examining the make up or judging it somehow.

"You know that there are different shades and fabrics--"

"Fine. Fine." It turned to look at her, eyes studying each offered fabric with the due diligence she desired, then it grinned and said again, "Black."

Jan was halfway to pouting before she paused as a thought occurred to her that never had before. "Hey.... Do you have a name?" 

Immediately, he reacted. And she wasn't certain why in that moment she was so certain that _it_ had become _he_ , but she was. All of his attention was on Jan, eyes wide and sparkling, and he seemed to hold his breath. "Yes," he told her, then followed that with, "Name me."

Jan thought of a few good names immediately, but instead of offering any of them, she said, "I want to call you by your own name."

His mouth pulled into the widest smile she had ever seen on him, and he grabbed her by her hips and lifted her into the air, spinning around. Jan giggled madly, grabbing onto his shoulders.

"Loki," He told her. "Call me Loki."

* * *

 By the time Tony was CEO of his company, he had spent innumerable times in his lab with Loki. They had built things together, blown things up together, and Tony could describe Loki in a thousand words, a thousand ways, without ever explaining him.

Tony's relationship with Loki was complicated, and not just because he couldn't explain what Loki was. Loki seemed to be an unchanging part of Tony's world. He looked the same as he did when Tony was sneaking into his father's office and working on engine's, as he did when Tony pulled all-nighters working on Jarvis in college, as he did now, with only the most minute changes. Loki towered over him from the time he was a child and Tony tracked his own growth by how close he was to catching up to Loki in height. The only thing that ever seemed to change about Loki was the length of his hair, currently shorter than the last time Tony saw him.

Jarvis couldn't see Loki and neither could Obie, but Loki could touch and interact with objects so Tony knew he was not imaginary. Tony was in turns unquestioning of Loki's presence and endlessly curious about it. Loki could turn up in his lab every night or disappear for months or years at a time. 

"You're distracted." Loki's voice brought Tony back to the present. The man's face was leaning too close to Tony's as he peered both at the machinery at his fingertips and Tony's face, but he didn't pull away.

"You're here, again," Tony said in acknowledgement.

"I'm here again," Loki repeated with a grin.

"Jarvis, Loki protocol," Tony ordered.

"Initiating Loki protocol."

"I've a protocol now?" Loki asked, grin widening. "What, pray tell, does that consist of?"

"Warnings in case Pepper or Obie try to drop by, instructions that Jarvis not interfere or react to anything I say unless directly addressed, and constant scans on the room to try and decipher where you come from," Tony explained. He moved away from the table and tinkering he was doing, watching Loki as he crossed the room to grab a bottle of water.

"Back to that, are we?" Loki asked. "You're always so curious."

"Truth," Tony said. "Is that why you keep coming around or the reason you keep leaving?"

"Neither," Loki told him. "Your curiosity is almost irrelevant."

"Almost," Tony repeated, pointing at Loki as if making a point. "So what does bring you back here? Today, at least."

Loki drew close, taking Tony's hands in his own. "I came to keep you up all night," Loki told him in low voice. "For several nights." his voice was almost hypnotic as he pulled Tony back toward his work bench.

"You like disrupting my sleep, don't you?" Tony asked, but a smile was pulling at his lips. It wasn't unusual for Tony to stay up all night working and it wasn't odd for Loki to keep him up, either, but that didn't mean that Tony wasn't looking forward to it all the same.

Loki pushed Tony, not to where he had previously been standing, but to one of his other work benches with spare parts and an array of tools. Loki wrapped his arms around Tony's shoulders, hanging off of him and whispering in his ear. "I've got things to tell you, Tony. I've got things to show you." Loki arms tightened around him and Tony felt warmer, his mind was practically buzzing. "Tony," Loki breathed in his ear.

Tony shivered, felt a storm kicking up in his brain, a grin fixing itself on his lips, an idea sparking up inside him. He chose a few parts almost at random and began.

* * *

Steve was dead tired, but he couldn't sleep. There was very little light, only what little the moon could provide as it shone in the night sky. The ground was muddy and uncomfortable, but all this was to be expected. War was hard and he had not enlisted because he thought it would be easy.

It was late enough that even the few stragglers that were still awake seemed to be struggling with it. Steve was one of a few people that was keeping guard and there was only one thing that kept him from being similarly in danger of drifting.

"You'll have to go bigger if you want it to keep until morning," Loki whispered to him. Steve wasn't sure why she was whispering, unless it was just in keeping with the mood. It wasn't as if anyone else could hear her, as he had learned years ago.

He looked up at her from the drawing that he was trying to etch into the mud. She was a sight for sore eyes, that was sure. He hadn't seen her often since he'd joined the war and he was starting to piece together why. Likewise, she had changed a lot over the years. At least, he thought she had changed. Steve wasn't entirely certain that the thing (things?) he had seen and spoken to over the years were all the same or that he wasn't just wacky in the head. In fact, the things he had before seen didn't even have a name! Or, they hadn't offered him one. It had only been after Steve had gone to war that Loki appeared to him as a women or that she had offered him a name.

"I'm not sure I should be trying to make it stay," Steve told her.

"You feel it, don't you?" Loki asked. "It's building in your veins. It's making you go crazy! Your hands are itching for a pencil, for some charcoal, for paint."

"That might be true," Steve admitted reluctantly, quietly, not wanting anyone to hear him talking to someone only he could see. "But I'm suppose to be on guard."

"You won't guard anyone if you fall asleep dreaming about it," Loki scolded. "And the longer you stay awake, the more likely you'll be able to keep your fellows awake."

She made a good point. Loki always made a good point. It was how he'd ended up drawing on his walls when he was small, tearing up magazine's to make collages, and pocketing pencils from school so that he'd have something to draw with at home. Even when Loki told him to do things he knew he shouldn't, she always made it sound good. Steve couldn't say he had always been good at knowing the difference between things that Loki made sound good and things that were actually reasonable, but he did know Loki to an extent.

Loki seemed to have one goal in mind, one reason why she appeared, and one thing she cared about-Art. Loki had never appeared him unless he was doing something art related or heavily wanting to. Steve would argue that even the change in her appearance lent itself to that. Steve was surrounded by men day in and day out. Her feminine appearance did as much to inspire him and "wake him up" in a sense as her long missed presence.

Steve was pulled out of his thoughts by Loki's hand settling atop his own. Loki's eyes were sparkling, her smile warm, and her voice, when she spoke, soft. "You want to, don't you?"

He did. He really, really did. Looking around, he found a good spot where he could keep guard on his men, see anything approaching, and also have an open plain of land to draw upon. It would just be lines in the mud. It wouldn't be a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination. But the thought stirred Steve, moved him. It kept him alive.

"Alright," Steve agreed. "Help me keep watch."

Loki's eyes were sparkling as he bent over the ground. She stood behind him, tall and vigilant, placed her hand on his shoulder. She agreed with her body, not with her words. "Go on, now."

* * *

 It followed her on missions. Not every mission and it didn't always follow her, but she always noticed it was there. 

It was a snake when she was vicious. It slithered up her body and whispered in her ear during interrogations, when she needed to find new and worse ways to draw information from her targets. She draws black widows into their skin, carves out the lines of spider webs with scalpels, and creates traps of twine or rope to dig deep into their flesh.

It doesn't tell her what to do, doesn't critique her, doesn't berate her, it compliments her.

"Your lines are getting straighter."

"Signing your name?"

"You're learning."

It speaks, but it's words don't mean anything, don't matter. The hissing voice gives her something else to focus on. The words are more commentary than comment. She is a black widow. It is a snake. They are a pair at these times. She's never had a partner, only handlers or chaperones, and she likes it.

When she performs, it is always in the audience. Regardless of who her audience is suppose to be. It sits among her soon to be victims, among her watching superiors, among a crowd prepped for her cover. It was easy to pick it out in a crowd. It had been a magpie when she was child, when she practiced, it was a snake when she was working, and it was a wolf when she was performing.

Natasha no longer trusted people, hadn't trusted people for a long time now, and so it was never a person when it appeared to her. She wasn't certain if it _was_ a person, if it could be, but she imagined it was the closest thing she could ever have to a friend.

* * *

 As an adult, Jan had taken her childhood interest in fashion and made it into an addiction. Even as a superhero, that obsession came across with how often she changed her costume. 

"Red or yellow?" She asked.

"Yellow. It's such an underrated color." Loki was lounging on her bed, back to being a woman. An unnaturally beautiful woman and it made her want to create something to hug those curves, to show off that skin, to contrast and complement her appearance.

It was only when Loki smiled at her that she realized she had been staring. She flushed at being caught admiring her, again. Loki was nearly a constant presence in her life and she changed fashions as often as Jan herself did. There were a million reasons that Jan had ended up absolutely thrilling over Loki's look, whether he was a hot guy or a hot girl, since he was almost always one or the other.

Loki didn't speak to her much about topics other than fashion, art, or Jan herself, but she had made little hints. Small things to make Jan think that Loki had appeared as something other than human, other than young and pretty. No matter how much Jan asked though, Loki avoided talking about herself.

"Should it be plain or striped?"

"You've had a lot of solid colors lately," Loki replied. It wasn't an answer, but Loki had done that often. Giving her opinions or facts without answering her questions.

Jan jumped onto the bed beside her, staring down at her with a look that was between a glare and a pout.

Loki raised an eyebrow at her. "Yes?"

"You never tell me anything," Jan said.

Loki laughed at that, reaching out to cup her cheek. "What are you talking about. Of course I do."

"I mean, about yourself."

"Does that matter?"

"Yes!"

Loki smiled widely, her eyes gleaming as Jan had not seen in years. "Tell me."

"I want to know who you are," Jan told her. "What do you get up to? What do you like?" Jan hesitated before asking her next question, forcing herself not to whisper when she did so. "Who else do you talk to?"

"What do you want the answer to be?" Loki asked in a fervent whisper, meeting Jan's gaze full on.

"The truth."

Loki pulled Jan into her arms and rolled them over on the bed before hugging her tightly. "Alright, I'll show you."

"You will?" Jan asked in surprise.

"Not now," Loki told her. "But I will."

* * *

 

"It's beautiful," Loki said, leaning down beside the work table to closely examine Tony's latest armor. Tony grinned, enjoying the praise of Loki's unfaltering gaze on his armor, despite the fact that Loki was with him every step of the way as Tony created this version.

"Of course it is," Tony bragged. "I'm a genius."

Loki's gaze shifted to Tony, sharing in his amusement and mirroring his grin. "I'm impressed. Amazed, even," Loki told him. He was as much complementing Tony as he was teasing him, but that's what Loki did. Tony was used to it.

"Sir?" Jarvis spoke up for the first time in the last two days. Tony didn't really like to be interrupted when Loki was around, despite the fact that no one could see him. There were several reasons for this, not the least of which that when Loki was around Tony didn't have any interest in doing anything except building things or blowing them up. "The Team is requesting entrance to the lab."

"What for?" Tony asked.

"You've been down here for three days straight, Sir," Jarvis reported.

"Oh. Have I really?" Tony asked.

"Indeed you have been, Sir."

"Huh." Tony shared a look with Loki, who was as equally bad at judging time as Tony could be. "Yeah, alright. Send them on down."

It only took another sound from Loki to distract Tony entirely from the fact that his teammates would be down soon. Loki was humming appreciatively as he dragged a finger over the polished look.

"This is worlds better than your first," Loki told him. "You've improved so much, it's almost a completely different instrument."

"Keep praising me that much and maybe I'll make you one."

Loki laughed at that, thoroughly amused. "Whatever would I do with it?"

"We'd find something to do," Tony assured him.

"Tony, who are talking to in here?" Steve asked as he entered the lab, pausing halfway through the door. Natasha entering on his heels froze as well, stopping to scrutinize the man standing near Tony.

"Ah! What are you stopping the doorway for?" Jan demanded from behind them?

"Do I...?" Steve began, but was cut off due to Jan pushing her way past them and into the room.

"Geez, who just stops right in the middle of a doorway?" Jan complained. Then she looked forward and gasped. "Loki!"

"Loki?" Natasha repeated suspiciously. Something felt... off about this, but she didn't know what it was just yet.

"No way," Steve repeated to himself. 

Jan was already darting across the room and springing into Loki's arms, who easily caught and spun her around before pulling her into a hug. 

"You can see him?" Tony questioned dubiously. "Wait a minute!" Tony turned to Loki and Jan. "You know her? You know people?"

"I don't exist in a vacuum," Loki replied to Tony. He look at Jan as he added, "I promised this one that I would show her that."

Steve and Natasha were still standing at the door when Clint walked in. He paused to look at them before asking, "What are you all dong?"

There was a prevailing silence before Loki spoke up. "Well, I can't tell him."

"How many of you plan on barging in here?" Tony asked grumpily, going to one of his work tables and playing around with a few parts. It was mostly just a diversion, something to make Clint think he was busy and annoyed, but Tony liked having something to do with his hands anyway.

"Well, the food is here, so I'm gone," Clint told them.

"Save me something!" Jan yelled after him.

Loki, smiling, moved away from Jan to approach the two standing at the door. Natasha tensed, but Steve just looked confused. "Aren't you going to greet me, Steve?"

"You're really Loki?" Steve asked, staring at the man before him. Since the war, he'd never seen Loki as anything but a woman and he'd begun to forget that Loki could be anything else.

"I could appear only as you know me, but I thought this would do more to bring you all together." As he spoke, Loki moved closer to Natasha, who was eyeing him warily. "I know it's a while, my dear, but you must remember my voice."

"Why are you human?" She asked suspiciously.

"Human shaped," Loki corrected. "I am the way I am made to be," Loki told her. "You don't need me to be that way any longer, now do?"

"Alright, I wasn't gonna ask this," Tony said, putting his down the things he'd been pretending to fiddle with. "But what are you?"

"Are you asking because you want me to tell you or because you've given up trying to figure it out?' Loki asked.

"Yes," Tony answered.

"I'm a muse," Loki explained. "I am a creature of creativity, shaped by the humans whom I inspire. Defined by them, if you will. It was just my luck that I have four humans so closely intertwined."

"Wait!" Jan exclaimed. "You could have appeared anytime the four of us were together. Why now?"

"Why?" Loki asked, a huge grin spreading across Loki's face. "The same reason that I have ever appeared to any of you." Loki reached out to take Natasha's hand, pulling her close and spinning her in  ballet move that the spy actually went along with.

"I've got things to show you," He said enthusiastically. "I've got things to tell you." Natasha actually began to smile as Loki directed and moved her into different positions. It had been a long time since she'd performed. A long time since she'd done it for herself and longer since she enjoyed it. It was like a well practiced take down, her body remembered all the right steps. Even though she had never taken them with this particular partner, Loki moved like they were old partners, and perhaps they really were, in a sense.

"You feel it, don't you?" He asked them, meeting all of their eyes. "It's building in your veins. It's making you go crazy!" He brought her upright and reached out to Jan, who did not hesitate to take his hand. Her smile was bright and she bouncing in place, as excited as she had ever been and maybe even more. He looked to Tony, already grinning, and Steve looking immensely curious. They could feel it in their finger tips, the need, the desire. Natasha could feel it in her bones.

"I want to keep you up all night," Loki told them.


End file.
